Falling
by AchaeaMG
Summary: Each time we talked she stared. And each time she stared, I fell for her a bit more.


**A/N: This story, where Beca and Chloe both are freshmen, is written from the perspective of Chloe. The story is based on the Radiolab episode 'Falling'. Seriously, listen to it. Disclaimer: I do not own Pitch Perfect or Radiolab.**

* * *

I still remember the first time I saw her. She was sitting in the shade under a tree on campus. I was standing at the Bellas' booth, only half listening to some overly enthusiastic girl talk about singing a capella. I already knew that I was joining, so the story was lost on me, really. My attention was focussed on the small brunette. She was wearing oversized headphones and was nodding her head along with the music. She opened her eyes to look around.

When she caught me staring, I didn't look away. There was something about her that kept my attention. She was staring back. The duration of our eye contact would be uncomfortable, but for some reason it felt natural, like we had known each other for ages. I was eventually forced to break eye contact when the girl I was talking to handed me a flyer and pointed at it. I reluctantly turned my attention to her to be able to politely end our conversation.

I turned back to find that the brunette was no longer sitting in her spot. I walked around to try to find her and eventually found her standing at the Barden Deaf Jews club. She was talking to a loud blonde, offering her the occasional smile. The moment the blonde turned her attention to the guys behind the booth, the brunette fled. She walked past me but was stopped by the girl at the Bellas booth. Although she didn't look the least bit interested, she still endured the enthusiastic explanation and nodded politely. When the girl asked her if she was indeed interested in joining, she quickly shook her head and told her that she couldn't even sing.

The girl was occupying my thoughts a lot the first few weeks of college. Somehow it felt like we had a connection, there was something about that eye contact. I kept hoping that I would run into her, but unfortunately that didn't happen. My luck changed a few weeks after the first time I saw her. I had just gone for a run and was dying for a shower. When I entered all showers were empty, so I picked one near the end, hung my bathrobe and stepped in. Just before I was done, I heard a faint hum. Someone had entered the showers and was now starting to sing in the shower next to me. Her voice sounded amazing, and somewhat familiar.

I couldn't contain myself and bursted into the other shower. When I pulled back the shower curtain, I was surprised to see the same girl that had been in my mind for weeks. She didn't notice me at first, until I commented on her singing voice. She turned around startled and looked shocked. She was studying my face, before resting her gaze on my eyes. We shared the same eye contact we had before. I asked her why she had told the Bellas that she couldn't sing and she only shrugged. Then I asked her to sing with me, threatening to stand there until she would. Eventually she gave in and it was amazing. She stared into my eyes our entire duet.

I ran into her a few more times the next few weeks. She had gotten a job at the local radio station, so I ambushes her a few times outside of the building and asked her about her job, her courses and if she had already decided to join the Bellas. I also saw her in the library or just randomly on campus at times. Every time she had her ridiculously large headphones on, but she always pulled them off when I approached her. She would stare into my eyes when we were talking. Every time she looked at me, I was falling more and more. There was something about this girl.

A few days before the Bellas auditions she eventually gave in and promised me to audition. She told me that I wasn't the first to ask and that if they were actually this desperate, she would give it a try. I was nervous for my own audition, but maybe even more nervous for hers. She arrived quite late and didn't prepare the song she had to. She grabbed the cup of the table of the Bella captains and gave an amazing performance. When she was done, she smirked, got up and walked off stage. She didn't seem to notice me or the guy that had also been watching her.

On initiation night I was glad to see her standing next to me. She had made the Bellas, so I would be seeing a lot more of her. When the creepy part was over, we all joined the other a capella groups for a party. I noticed she talked to the guy from auditions a long time, giving him the same kind of stare I had been subject to so many times.

Seeing Beca, as I learned her name was at initiation, interact with that guy the way she had with me, gave me a feeling of jealousy, but I didn't think too much of it. It did give me that last bit of courage I needed to ask her out. I walked up to her one day after Bellas practice and asked her out to dinner. I was surprised that she accepted my invitation.

Our dinner was much like our other encounters. We talked about college, singing, the past and the future. She told fascinating stories, each one more unique than the next. When I was talking, she was looking at me intently like I was the only person on earth. We talked until it was dark and we both really needed to get back to our dorms. I was glad the she invited me to a second date.

We dated for a while before she called me and told me that we needed to talk. By that time I had noticed some strange behaviours. At times, she would just walk by me on campus without noticing me. When we had dates, she would always say my name at the start of the conversation, like she was making sure it was me. She was mostly early on dates, already sitting at a table and waiting for me to arrive. She would only wave once I waved.

I didn't know what to expect. I definitely didn't expect this. I came over to her dorm and she asked me to sit down. She pulled over a chair to sit in front of me and took my hands. She told me she had to tell me something and asked me to hear her out and not get mad. She said that she had wanted to feel normal for a change and didn't want me to pity her. She wanted to date like two normal people, but admitted that she was falling for me, so she felt like I needed to know.

* * *

Prosopagnosia. She had prosopagnosia. It took a brief explanation from her part for me to understand what that word meant. It was a fancy word for face blindness, which meant that she was unable to recognize faces. Even if she had seen a face many times before, she would not be able to recognize it the next time. This was due to her fusiform gyrus, a part of her brain specialized in recognizing faces, not working as it should.

I asked her so many questions that night. It started out with the superficial questions. How had she gotten it? Could it ever be cured? What did she see when she was looking at a face? Eventually I started to ask questions about our relationship. She admitted that it had taken her a while to figure out that I was the girl that had ambushed her in the shower. She hadn't realized it until she heard me sing. During our time of dating she also figured out I was the girl that ambushed her outside the radio station. She didn't link many of our other conversations together and was surprised to hear how many conversations we had actually had.

She also told me about her tricks. When starting a conversation, she would always first call out the name of the person she thought she was talking too. If she had no idea who had approached her, she tried to make them say something that would give her a hint. She memorized the clothing choice of people that were important to her in order to recognize them. She also focussed on people's voices. When she was younger, she once gave all of her friends a unique bracelet for Christmas, so she could always recognize them.

Then she said something that shocked me. The staring she did, the exact feature I had been falling for before we started dating, was a trick as well. She looked at everybody like she had known them for years, just in case this was true. Most people looked away quickly, so she would know that they didn't know her. If someone didn't, she would just assume that she knew them.

Learning this didn't make our connection feel fake or make me fall out of love. If possible, it made me fall for her even more.

* * *

After her revelation we talked about things I could do to help her. I started wearing the same brightly coloured bag every time I would meet her. When we were talking to someone, I would always say their name in the conversation so Beca would know who it was. When I was meeting her, I would approach her first, always announcing myself, so she knew it was me. We worked around it.

After a while we moved in together and life was great. Of course there were doubts, frustrating moments and fallouts, but we always worked it out. We had fallen for each other and would never let go. One lazy Sunday morning I woke up next to her and told her that I thought life was perfect. She replied that she thought it was almost perfect. When I asked her what she meant by almost, she sat up and pulled out a small red box from the drawer of her night stand.

"Will you marry me?"

Now life was perfect.


End file.
